Admin Alert: Readers Check in on PC5250 Color Changes

by Joe Hertvik

After last week's column, "Admin Alert: Produce Pleasing PC5250 Pictures for Pupils and Printers," we received some interesting reactions and illuminations on the whole process. Here's a sampling of what some readers think about changing PC5250 colors, as well as some comments and tips from me.

The reason I discarded PC5250 color changes is still there. I find the color change annoying because there are certain black bars that appear as "Others" in the Color Mapping window, and the foreground color cannot be changed for these items. Is there any way to fix this?

--Dick G.

One of the things that helps this situation is the Advanced button on the PC5250 Color Mapping screen (which you enter by clicking Edit, Preferences, Appearance, then Color Mapping, from the PC5250 menu bar). Click Advanced and PC5250 provides an advanced Color Mapping screen (the technique I discussed last week just uses basic color mapping).

The advanced version of Color Mapping provides an alternate way of implementing color changes that allows you to define default colors for different screen elements in various PC5250 screen categories. Here's how it works.

Think of an element as a screen attribute that tells PC5250 how to display foreground and background colors for different screen areas. Think of a category as a grouping function that organizes different elements under one heading. On the advanced Color Mapping screen, you can change colors by selecting a single element under a specific category. Once you've clicked the proper category and element to change, you use the color bars that are included on the advanced screen to define foreground and background colors for that element. Like the basic screen, once you use this screen to change default colors for a PC5250 Element, it automatically changes all associated screen areas to those colors on your session's PC5250 display.

For PC5250 advanced Color Mapping, there are three categories and several elements for which you can change colors in each category. The possible category and element combinations are as follows:

• Field Colors--This category's elements define the seven basic colors of default foreground text and background colors used on a PC5250 screen. Field color elements include Green, White, Red, Turquoise, Yellow, Pink, and Blue, and you use these elements to define a different foreground or background color when PC5250 displays text in any of these colors.
• OIA Colors--Short for operator information area, these elements define what your text and background will look like for the bottom row of your PC5250 session (line 25). In this area, you can change the default foreground colors for the Status Indicators, Information Indicators, Attention Indicators and Error Indicator. You can also change the default OIA background color that each of these elements use by modifying the OIA Background element.
• Others--These elements, which Dick referred to in his e-mail, control everything that doesn't fit into the other two categories. Of particular interest here is the Screen Color element, where you can change the default background color of your entire PC5250 screen. Once a background color is selected, PC5250 automatically uses it as the default background color for every single element in the entire session. In addition to screen color, you can change foreground colors for the divider line, rule line, and column separator.

Dick solved his PC5250 screen problem by changing the screen color element to white. This change made white the default background color for the entire PC5250 screen, eliminating the small black bars he couldn't get rid of in the basic color mapping screen.

It should also be noted that, as with the basic color mapping screen, you can easily change your PC5250 screen colors to their default settings by clicking the Default button on the advanced Color Mapping screen. You can also return to the basic screen by clicking the Basic button in the upper right-hand corner of the advanced screen.

There's a simple difference between using the basic and the advanced Color Mapping options. The basic Color Mapping screen allows you to point-and-click the area in the PC5250 session for which you want to change colors; the advanced Color Mapping screen allows you to change colors for different elements on a PC5250 screen, regardless of whether that element is being used in the current PC5250 session.

Here's another useful job for color mapping. If you work on multiple sessions, or even multiple machines, you can set screens up in different colors, so you can quickly tell which environment you are working in. I do this for my test libraries all the time, where I change the screen color so I know at a glance I'm working with test libraries.

--Lori N.

In one environment I know of, you can open up to 20 different AS/400 sessions in a single day. Lori's color-coding technique might be impractical for a large machine environment, but it's more workable in a limited screen session shop, where users might be running two or three concurrent sessions for different purposes and can let suitable--but subtle--color coding be their guide.

I couldn't disagree with you more about changing all areas on the green-on-black screen to black-and-white! Taking away all the colors only makes a screen harder to read (there's a reason why the color of column headings is different from column data). You simply can't compare staring at a backlit white screen all day with a white sheet of paper. Take any sheet of black text on white paper, put a 60-watt light behind it, stare at it for 8 hours a day, and I think you'd be looking for a more soothing color combination. If I had to choose between green-on-black or black-on-white to stare at all day, it'd be an easy choice. PC5250 has the right idea.

Microsoft Word doesn't have the right idea.

Having said that, I'd nonetheless have to agree that when you need to print a screen, you should reverse the background color, and probably change the text to all black, but, again, that's only because you don't have a light shining from behind and you want to save some ink."

--Jim R.

I think Jim just hit on the reason why Starbucks sells so many different types of coffee. One flavor (or color, in our case) doesn't fit all tastes. Luckily, PC5250 color choices for backgrounds aren't limited to green-on-black or black-on-white. You can select from varying shades of orange, blue, green, yellow, red, white, and even pink, for your foreground and background colors. You're not limited to the more common choices I presented in last week's article, and you can make all of, or only part of, your PC5250 screens any color you'd like. And if you or your users don't like the final outcome, you can always return to the default green-on-black screens by using the Default button on either of the color mapping screens.

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